Technical Assistance to Support to Effective Air Emissions and Radiation Monitoring, and Improved Environmental Management in Belarus (SAQEM-1 Project)

About of project:

Description

The per capita share of hazardous air emissions in Belarus is 52% higher than in the European Union. The air quality monitoring and efficient control allow assessing and forecasting they key trends in the air quality changes in order to identify negative effects of natural anthropogenic factors.

Targets and objectives: The project is mainly aimed at improving the air quality in Belarus. The project implementation will facilitate legislative improvements and adoption of available practical measures to control and reduce industrial and transport air emissions.

Interim outcomes: Belarus has acceded to several essential international conventions on air protection, such the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, and the Aarhus Convention n on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters; however, Belarus has not yet ratified a number of crucial protocols to those conventions, such as the protocols on volatile organic compounds, on heavy metals, on persistent organic pollutants; the Gothenburg Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone; and the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers. The project has provided for the development of a justification for their ratification comprising: forecasts of environmental emissions of a number of hazardous pollutant; an assessment of the costs and benefits associated with their reduction; a relevant development of the best economically viable scenarios.

The project makes efforts to review the national regulations to help draft amendments for the development of an efficient air quality support framework in compliance with the European standards. The project has organised study tours to the Czech Republic, Sweden and Denmark in order to facilitate the process.

The project experts have examined the effective Belarusian system of integrated environmental permits regulating permissible impacts on land, water and air. They have developed certain recommendations that will enable Belarus to get closer to the European practices. Five Belarusian industrial companies in Homieĺ, Brest, Bielaaziorsk, Kasciukovičy and Minsk will be able to test the new system in near future.

The experts also have proposed a new monitoring zone classification and given their recommendations on improvement of the air quality surveillance stations including their equipment. A competitive bidding procedure for the procurement of 452 equipment units to the total of EUR 6.5 million has been successfully completed. The equipment for upgrading the 27 stations and laboratories will be delivered to all regions of the country from the beginning of 2020.

Air quality monitoring and traffic flow sensors will be installed in the streets of Brest, Orša, Hrodna and Pinsk. They will collect data on the emission of pollutants and transfer it to a special computer model that will be reflected as a colourful map. The system will help specialists both monitor and model the parameters; e.g., they will be able to see emissions and sources requiring reduction, and the extent of that reduction. Based on that data, the project will develop sustainable green development plans for the four cities.

Contacts: Alexander Grebenkov, Project Expert Team Manager

+375 17 364 4164; +375 29 685 2338, sasha_grebenkov@mail.ru

Web link: https://www.humandynamics.org/en/project/air-emissions-environmental-management